Carl Rohde

#4 William D. Eggers & Paul MacMillan – The Solution Revolution

Famines. Droughts. Floods. Crumbling infrastructures. Human trafficking. It is clear that in today’s era of economic fall-out, cost-cutting and political impotence we no longer can turn to governments alone to tackle these and other towering social problems. Fortunately, William D. Eggers & Paul Macmillan’s The Solution Revolution brings hope. New eco-systems are coming internationally to life. Eggers and MacMillan call them: Solution Eco-Systems. They are fresh and new combinations of collaborative networks that come together to solve a specific problem. For example, networks of companies (1), social entrepreneurs (2), foundations (3), and individual citizens (4) are working together to revolutionize, for instance, education (for example: Comcast and Khan Academy, red.). Or to find low-cost solutions to housing the billions of poor people worldwide who live in slums. Wavemakers and the others elements of solution ecosystems are distributing vaccines. Etcetera. And always online empowered.

Some of the best quotes:

”The solution revolution is almost the antithesis of how society’s toughest public challenges have traditionally been approached by large institutions. In no other space do we see such diverse resources – volunteer time, crowdfunding, capabilities of multinational corporations, entrepreneurial capital, philanthropic funding – aligned around common objectives such as reducing congestion, providing safe drinking water, or promoting healthy living.”

”In less than a decade, Unilever’s Project Shakti microloan program for women in rural Indian villages expanded from seventeen saleswomen to forty-five thousand, serving three million Indian households; it is now spreading to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.”

”Reward Ride awards points to riders and drives who can trade points for rides of their own, creating a micro-economy in the process. Meanwhile, the Avego app displays a driver’s routes to passengers, who can search for ride in their direction. The app works in real time. Wherever a passenger waits, the app alerts drivers, pulling up a profile of the prospective rider… Making this way the private car part of the pubic transit network.”

”Technology is reshaping society’s ability to solve its problems”

More info about the authors here.
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